The author Robert Scucci
| Published
Watching psychological horror movies is always an unfortunate experience for me, as the conventions of the genre often constrain the narrative in painfully obvious ways. After watching hundreds of movies that feature an untrustworthy protagonist with a troubled past that leads to questionable modern behavior, I keep coming back for movies like The girl who ran away. While this film begins to question what's real versus what's imagined in its lead, it becomes abundantly clear that sometimes you have to take things at face value, despite the buildup that would suggest otherwise.
so to say The girl who ran away sets up its own premise and throws the chain of events into question, but not before everything is brought back full circle with a third-act payoff that doesn't feel like a total blowout.
The girl who ran away
The girl who ran away lays all the cards on the table in its opening sequence, set in 1998, as a man and his boy drive down a dark country road. Seeing a woman covered in blood and brandishing a knife, the father stops to see how he can help, urging his son to keep the door locked. When a little girl crashes through the car window, the boy lets her in, learning that she is a missing girl named Christina Bowden (played by Victoria Semenenko in this sequence), who escaped from the clutches of serial killer Elizabeth Caulfield (Kay Tuckerman).
In the present day, Christina (Lexi Johnson) has grown up and works as an elementary school teacher. Realizing that she wouldn't have had a chance to come of age without someone taking her in after running away, Christina adopts Lisa Spencer (Willow McCarthy), a troubled teenager who reminds her of herself as she tries to make peace with her. own violent past. While Christine lives a normal life to the best of her ability, her world is rocked when Officer Jamie Nwosu (Chukwudi Iwuji) tracks her down to tell her that Elizabeth Caulfield has escaped from prison and seems happy to finish what she started. many years ago.
Safe House and Body Count
The titular girl who ran away is in hiding under Jamie's watch, but wants to keep up her appearance so no one worries about her well-being. Constantly looking over her shoulder, Christina becomes justifiably paranoid when her past comes back to haunt her, but not without mind-numbing episodes where she wakes up with blood and dirt on her hands, making you question her innocence more than once. While there was never any doubt in my mind about Christina's innocence, it's hard to ignore the fact that death seems to follow her everywhere she goes, like she's hiding some deep, dark, buried secret she doesn't want to be. revealed.
A surprising turn of events
The above release for The girl who ran away it sounds like for the rest of its run, something as fictional as christina would be the killer all along and blame elizabeth for crimes she actually committed as a child. Without spoiling the plot, I can assure you that you will experience a peculiar ending that is not your average. psychological horror movie.
Is Christina so upset that she is an unreliable witness in several cases? Absolutely.
But is she deliberately hiding incriminating evidence to the point where she's rightfully considered the primary person of interest in the recent murders surrounding her?
Here's where things get confusing in the story.
I found myself watching and changing my mind about a dozen times The girl who ran away because it does something different than its contemporaries in that we don't just see events from Christina's questionable perspective; the level of objectivity of the supporting characters is ambiguous but meaningful as the mystery is pieced together and the authorities try to track down Elizabeth Caulfield.
Lots of twists and turns
Are we dealing with a psychotic serial killer who used his youth and innocence to imprison his would-be captor, who now wants revenge? Or are we dealing with a deeply traumatized and troubled woman whose memory of her past becomes fractured when she learns that her life is in danger after years of childhood repression?
If you want answers to these questions, you can stream The girl who ran away free on Tubi.
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